Five publication launches during the 19th Festival

Three books linked to the Festival's theme will be launched, as well as another one dedicated to its history and, finally, a magazine about the influence of gender issues on art

Five publications will be launched during the 19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil | Southern Panoramas, slated for October 6 to December 6, 2015 in São Paulo. Three of them are linked to the Festival’s themes, acting as printed platforms for this edition’s exhibitions and debates, and as additional environments for the development of its curatorial issues.

A fourth publication celebrates the three decades of Videobrasil’s history, mapping the transformations undergone by video and its convergence with art from the 1980s on.

The final publication is An Alliance of Vulnerable Bodies, the 11th edition of the annual contemporary art magazine Caderno Sesc_Videobrasil, edited by curator Miguel Angel López and focusing on how feminism, gender issues, post-pornography, queer activism and sexual dissidence are transforming traditional subjects and discourses within art history.

The publications are produced via a partnership between Associação Cultural Videobrasil and Edições Sesc São Paulo, which is part of Sesc São Paulo – the co-producer of the Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil –, and coordinated by the journalist Teté Martinho.

Find out more about the five publications:

SOUTHERN PANORAMAS | GUEST ARTISTSFeatures references about the work and thoughts of Abdoulaye Konaté (Mali), Gabriel Abrantes (Portugal), Rodrigo Matheus (Brazil), Sonia Gomes (Brazil), and Yto Barrada (Morocco), the artists in the Southern Panoramas | Guest Artists exhibit, which is part of the 19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil. Through conversations with the exhibition artists and curators, the publication outlines the research developed by each participant, the ideas behind them, the artists’ connection with the notion of a geopolitical South, and the curatorial themes that run through the exhibition. Images from relevant works and biographical information shed light on the backgrounds and universes of each of the guest artists.

VIDEOBRASIL: THREE DECADES OF VIDEO, ART, ENCOUNTERS, AND TRANSFORMATIONSThe publication revisits the contents and changes that have marked Videobrasil’s 30-year trajectory, transforming a local initiative designed to foster and discuss 1980s Brazilian video into a platform for contemporary art production from the geopolitical South of the world. Projecting forth from the present, it hones in on the artists, artworks and ideas that helped build the Festival’s identity, and sheds light on turning points in its history, such as its going international and embracing all artistic manifestations. In doing so, it ultimately encompasses broader fragments of history: the discovery of video as an artistic medium and matter by international avant-gardes in the 1950s-60s; the ideas that breathed new life into Brazilian audiovisual and art productions of the 1960s and 1970s; the arrival of home video formats in Brazil, coinciding with the desire to renew the language and thematic range of open television in the 1980s; the integration of video artists into the art system, from the 1990s on; and, more recently, the discovery of the tool by artists not necessarily associated with it.

SOUTHERN PANORAMAS | READINGS - Perspectives for other geographies of thoughtEssays and art manifestos that present, advocate, or question the notion of geopolitical South, which pools together regions with shared historical, social and cultural contexts can be found on Southern Panoramas | Readings - perspectives for other geographies of thought. Through the input of theoreticians and sample contemporary artistic and cultural practices, the publication discusses ideas that challenge Eurocentric representations and narratives.

SOUTHERN PANORAMAS | SELECTED ARTWORKS AND COMMISSIONED PROJECTSThe publication catalogues the 60 artworks and projects featured in the exhibitions Southern Panoramas | Selected artworks and Southern Panoramas | Commissioned Projects, both of which are part of the 19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil. The selection was made from a pool of roughly 2,000 entries. The shows’ curators deliver reviews/synopses of each of the pieces and short essays about the projects, also portrayed in images and sketches. A special segment features pictures of the two exhibitions at Sesc Pompeia and Galpão VB.

CADERNO SESC_VIDEOBRASIL 11: An Alliance of Vulnerable BodiesCurated by Peruvian writer and curator Miguel Angel López, the 11th Caderno Sesc_Videobrasil looks into how feminism, gay activism, post-pornography, and other body-oriented critical responses are transforming the very discourses of art history and art grammar. The publication combines theoretical essays and visual proposals that revisit queer art initiatives or provide new visions of art history in the light of said critical responses. Features a printed version of Giuseppe Campuzano’s Museo Travesti del Perú, presented by Ángel Lopez at the 31st São Paulo Art Biennial.